


Unreal

by glacis



Category: Eureka
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-28
Updated: 2010-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with virtual reality is it isn't real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unreal

Unreal, a Eureka vignette by Glacis.  Rated PG for implicit slashy sex.  Spoilers for ‘Blink.’  No infringement intended.

It wasn’t until after the third game that Jack finally pinned down what was wrong.

His team came back strong from their first defeat, once Jack figured out how to swing in a virtual reality setting without underestimating the impact on the virtual ball, and once he got over the empty feeling in his pitching hand when he wound up to throw a sinker.  Running in the VR helmets was a little unsettling since his head felt like it was twice the size it should be, but he got over that, eventually.  He even had the unexpected thrill of hearing Zoe cheer for him when he laid ‘bat’ on ‘ball’ and actually got it ‘over’ the ‘wall’.

Still, it wasn’t quite what Jack had intended when he’d suggested a pick-up baseball league at the town meeting.  And it took him a couple weeks to figure it out.  During those two weeks, people kept giving him odd looks.  Well, odder than usual, and given the rampant oddness that was Eureka and her residents, that was saying something.

“You okay, sheriff?”  Jo asked three days after the first loss.  He stared blankly at her.

“Yeah,” he eventually answered, then went back to staring at his (empty) desk.

“’Cause, you know, for a first time on the field, you didn’t do too badly.”

He didn’t have to look up to see her smirk, but it didn’t really register.  His brain was too occupied trying to figure out what was wrong.  They sat in silence for awhile, the only sound in the office the clicking as Jo broke down, cleaned and snapped her guns back together.

When he didn’t rise to the bait, Jo eventually asked, more tentatively, “You sure you’re okay?”  She actually sounded concerned.

He looked up again, mumbled, “Uh huh,” then got up and wandered out the door.

She followed him.  He didn’t pay any attention.  There was just something about that…

She watched him closer as the days went by.  He did his job, caught a couple bad guys experimenting with some kind of energy zapper doohickey that killed wildlife, made all the appropriate noises.  Stark showed up, Allison beside him, though Jack hadn’t bothered trying to get Allison to keep it on the down-low this time.  He’d just called it in and done his job.

“Stark.  Caught a couple yahoos with a bug zapper on steroids they’ve been frying house pets with.  Looks classified.  Come get it.”

“Er, Carter?”  Stark sounded confused.

Jack hung up.

Of course he hadn’t needed to give coordinates or anything.  Probably some kind of super tracker thingy in his cell phone that told where he was all the time.  Jack picked up the zapper by the handle end of it and handed it off to the first of the couple dozen brawny military types in full combat gear and nodded as Jo bundled the two weedy criminals into an unmarked black van.  Stark stood next to his car, looking expensive in his tailored suit and trench coat, and gave Jack a quizzical look.  Jack thought, absently, that black really made his blue eyes stand out, then nodded at Stark and went to walk by.  A hand on his arm stopped him.  Surprisingly, it was Stark’s, not Allison’s.  Allison was over talking to Jo.

“Carter.”  Stark sounded like he was spoiling for a fight.  Or suspicious.  Kind of paranoid.  Normal.

“What?” Jack asked, not particularly caring.

After a pause while Stark stared at him, looking for God knows what, he said, “Thank you for following protocols.”  He sounded like he was waiting for a punch line.

“Like I’d know what to do with a big bug zapper?” Jack asked rhetorically, then ducked out of Stark’s hold and went on to his truck.  After that, Allison watched Jack a lot, too.  Stark must have said something to her.

He didn’t know how to explain what was bothering him, but she didn’t ask, so that was okay.  And living with a self-aware AI watching his movements all the time at home had prepared him for Jo and Allison watching him every moment at work, so that didn’t bother him much.

Things got a little clearer one evening over dinner.  For once, Zoe was home, and she was actually willing to talk to him about her day.

“So then this huge guy, like six foot eight, smacks into this little guy, maybe five foot if he’s that tall, and knocks his books down.  They stared at each other for, like, a minute, and I’m expecting the little guy to get pounded into paste, but instead, the big guy, who looks like he’s all muscles and tattoos and a Mohawk and really kind of like he should be a biker in a gang or something, you know?  Starts apologizing and begging the little guy not to screw up his credit report or steal his identity or something.  I’m telling you, the nerds around here are seriously scary!”

“In other words, instead of the jocks hazing the nerds, the nerds haze the jocks, huh?” he asked.  Zoe nodded.  Her nose scrunched up, and the rhinestone in her nose piercing glinted in the light.

“It’s still bullying, though.  Still stupid.”  She gave him a sly glance.  “Maybe it’s a guy thing.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said slowly, “but you’re right.  Even if the bullying is turned around, it’s still wrong.”

“I guess.  Different than my last school, that’s for sure.”

“Are you happy here?” he asked, staring at her, fitting her reactions in to his attempt to understand what was wrong with the overall picture.

“Ecstatic,” she snapped back immediately, her tone so dry it made him wince.  “It’s okay,” she shrugged, fiddling with her fork, scraping her plate.

“Would you like dessert, Zoe?” S.A.R.A.H. asked, prompted by the sound of cutlery on stoneware.  Or watching them eat, whichever.  Probably both.

Zoe rolled her eyes and shrugged again.  “Weird.  You know.”

Yeah.  He did.

The next day at work he met with Allison and briefed her on all the wild and offbeat happenings in the town, a weekly ritual they’d begun shortly after he’d been exiled to Eureka.  When he finished, she looked down at her notes, looked back up at him, and asked, “Are you okay?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes, a habit he’d picked up from his daughter.  “Fine.  Why?”

“You’ve been really quiet lately.”  She looked concerned.

He shrugged it off.  “You up for playing first base this weekend?”

As distractions went, it worked like a charm.

Thoughts circled and circled, slotted into place, jumbled around, as he went through the motions of life in the oddest town on the planet, an alien among them, trying to find or make his place.  Still, it wasn’t until the third game, as he reared back and smoked a fireball that struck out Fargo, that he figured it out.

He came up for his final at-bat, smacked the crap out of the ‘ball’ and trotted home, smiling at Zoe who was going bananas in the stands.  Allison hugged him, Fargo glared at him, Henry cackled from the announcer’s booth.  Just another day at the ballpark.

Except it wasn’t.

Henry followed him home, as he’d done after the last few games, and S.A.R.A.H. provided them with beer.  Jack stared across the gleaming black maybe-marble countertop at the one man who felt like a friend in the midst of all the madness.  Henry grinned from ear to ear as he slugged back some of his own beer.

“Now, that’s what I call baseball!” Henry crowed (for the eight thousandth time), and Jack cracked.

“No,” he blurted out, deliberately unclenching his fingers from the fist they’d made around his beer glass before he broke it.  “It isn’t.”

Henry gave him a quizzical look.  “I know, it’s not what you’re used to, but …”

Implicit in the silence was the assurance that it was so much better than anything Jack had ever played before and, besides, it was Eureka, and it just wouldn’t be Eureka baseball if it wasn’t totally science-whacked.  Jack sighed.

“No,” he said, more quietly, “it’s not.  But not for the reasons you think it is.  Or at least, not for the reasons I think you’d think it is.”

Now Henry was looking confused, an expression that didn’t fit on his face.  Jack took a long drink of ridiculously good beer and tried to explain.  “Yeah, I broke a sweat, and stretched out my legs, and swung the bat-“

“And got a grand slam homer in the bottom of the ninth to win the game!” Henry crowed a little again, obviously trying to cheer Jack up.  It didn’t work.

“But it wasn’t baseball.”

Henry launched into a long-winded explanation of how one’s mind created a reality that perfectly simulated real-game conditions and as such it was just as much baseball as any other game played only without the risk of losing the ball over the fence or cracking a windshield with a long line drive.  Thankfully, his lecture wasn’t laden with all the techno-babble most people’s conversation was, because Jack wasn’t in the mood.

“There’s no ball,” he broke into the flow.  The statement settled there like a rock in the middle of a stream.  Henry looked at Jack.

Jack looked at Henry.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what was wrong ever since the first game.”

“It’s not just because your team lost?”  Jack snorted at him and Henry hurried on.  “So that’s why you’ve been so quiet,” Henry added.

Jack gave him an irritated look.  “Mother hen,” he muttered.  “Between you and Jo and Allison…”

“And Nathan and Fargo,” Henry put in.

“Eh?”  Jack shook his head and got back on track.  “Carter-watching.  Whatever floats your boat.  Anyway, that’s what’s wrong.  There’s no ball.”

“Does it feel like a ball?  Does it throw like a ball?” Henry questioned patiently.

Jack growled.  “No.  I know what it’s programmed to do.  But it’s not real.  Virtual reality is just that.  Unreal.  And it bugs me.”

Henry watched him closely, something like sympathy in his eyes.  “Symptomatic of many of your experiences since coming to Eureka, I’d imagine,” he said quietly.

“Virtual reality takes the reality out of life!” Jack exploded, hands flying out in a vaguely globe-like expression of life, the universe, and everything.  “Virtual baseball takes the damned ball out of the game.  What’s the point, then?  If you play a game of ball with NO BALL.  It’s like watching porn and calling it having sex.  Yeah, you get the same bang at the end but you’re still on your own, in your own head, using your own hands.”

Henry’s eyes widened, and he coughed.  “Are you describing your dislike of our baseball efforts or commenting on the lack of intimacy in your life?”

Jack sagged against the counter and gave Henry a miserable look.  “It’s just… this place.  The only good things I’ve found here are the beer, the bed, and you.”

While Henry was digesting that, the lights flickered, and an irritated AI cleared its virtual throat.

“And S.A.R.A.H.,” Jack hastily added.

“Well, if that’s the case…”  Henry walked deliberately around the counter and put a hand on either side of Jack’s hips, pinning him in place, before leaning in.

Jack looked down, looked up, then closed his eyes.  Henry’s mouth was warm and hungry, and maybe Jack hadn’t just been talking about baseball.

Much later, sprawled over Henry on the insanely comfortable mattress, feeling the last drop of beer slide down the side of the glass to drop onto his tongue, Jack sighed happily.  “Ain’t nothing like the real thing.”

“Now that’s what I call balls,” Henry slurred from somewhere around his shoulder, and Jack smiled all the way to sleep.

END


End file.
